A young military scale modeler at work

British Crusader Mk.II

When the Second World War broke out, the primary British tank was the Cruiser light tank series. When they first came out in 1941, they were fast and manoeuvrable, but very weak to enemy fire and under-armed. These issues were addressed by the second variant of the tank, visible by the auxiliary turret on the front of the tank (which was often removed in the field, eliminating the hull machine gunner). The most important contributions made by these tanks were mainly during actions in the North African Campaign, where during the Battle of El Alamein at Tobruk and actions in Tunisia, proving to be a vital part of the 1st Armoured Brigade. At the end of the war over 5000 machines were build in all variants, and contributed to many British victories during the early stages of the war.

Despite my usual love for building aviation subjects, I do tend to build something else from time to time. My first armor kit was this Tamiya 1/48 Crusader Mk.I/II tank, which I bought during my travels around London.The kit itself was a mere dream to build, as one could expect from the newer Tamiya kits. I decided to make a Desert version of the Northern Africa desert campaign, and wished to create a camouflaged version as I had some photos of desert crusaders showing many of signs of weathering and paint chipping.

I had been wanting to do the hairspray technique for a long time and decided to try it with this new project. Even though this has been a while ago, I’m pretty satisfied with the result. I used Tamiya’s ‘NATO brown’ as the base color and then some ‘NATO black’ was added on top of the hairspray. The top coat was heavily brushed of with different tools and water. Some bags and ammo boxes were added for some variation. Many of soldiers kept their belongings outside their tanks, as they were cramped inside and most of the desert combat was conducted over miles of open space with the entry ports open.